


Beyond the reach of Rome

by oanja



Category: Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, not very graphic though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-07 22:18:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8818303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oanja/pseuds/oanja
Summary: Titus Pullo does his very best to keep his promise to Lucius and take him back to Rome to die. There is a small but insistent part of him that wants to do more; to take Lucius back to Rome to live.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rabbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabbit/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide for my recipient Rabbit
> 
> Thank you Reishiin and messy_kisses for the beta. All remaining mistakes are mine.

Pullo wrenches his sword free from the torso of the falling bandit. The body slumps to the ground, a spray of blood splattering on the dusty ground, but Pullo doesn’t notice. He’s scanning the road but there’s nobody left to fight. He coughs; the skirmish has made dust rise from the road, or what passes for a road in this gods forsaken province they are in. It isn’t paved and it isn’t straight. It’s easy to see how far they are beyond the reach of Rome.

Lucius is leaning against the side of their small wagon, his breath heaving, and there’s a fresh wound on his arm: only a glancing blow, not even bleeding much anymore. The red of his hair looks less bright and there’s still a sickly pallor to his skin. Yet, he lives. The bastard won’t give up this easy.

It was touch and go there for weeks on end. It all could have gone so much worse, on that bit of road not so long ago. It’s always up to Fate and Fortuna when it comes to fighting, even if every man tries to convince himself otherwise at some point. Trusting the strength of your own sword arm, the superior skill you think you possess, but it’s all folly once you face your enemy on the field. Pullo has seen the most skilled fighters downed by untested men, by unlucky falls or stumbles, or felled by an arrow shot so far away you never even saw the shooter. Truly, a man’s fate was out of his control the moment he stepped on a battlefield. The strength lay in going forward anyway, even with that knowledge burning in the back of your mind.

This time Pullo had been afraid that not even the steel hard unyielding force of will of one Lucius Vorenus would bring the man through. The wound was so grave.

There is a healer in a small town in Egypt now, forever in his prayers for saving Lucius.

So a month later they are on their way back to Rome, crawling along slowly, no horses to their name and only a mule pulling their small cart.

“Back on your back then, Lucius,” Pullo tells his former commander with a light tone in his voice. “You look about to collapse and you are heavy to carry around.”

Lucius manages a weak glare, but there’s a sheen of sweat on his brow that betrays how weak he is.

Caesarion pokes his head up from where he’d been hiding as he’d been told to do, his small hands gripping the mule’s reins. It seems that some sense has finally sunk into the boy’s head. It’s too bad it had taken Lucius’ injury to cause such an epiphany. It would become costly to teach the boy anything if every lesson came with such a hefty price. The boy looks at Lucius, brow furrowed and anxious, but he doesn’t say anything.

Pullo sheathes his sword and walks to Lucius and helps him up to the wagon bed. Lucius lies down with a grimace and his face is pale as death. Pullo holds his tongue and only dumps the spear Lucius had been using next to the man.

“Come then, Caesarion, walk with me.”

The boy jumps down from the wagon and looks around the carnage. It’s not much to look at. There had only been four men in the band. A weak and miserable group to begin with. 

The fight had been too close for comfort.

“I’ll look if they have any money,” Caesarion announces and goes to the closest body and crouches down. Pullo almost tells the boy not to bother. By the look of the men, they had been after their mule, just to get something to put into their bellies, but looking through bodies can work as a lesson, so he leaves the boy to his task and turns back to Lucius.

“You going to live?” he asks.

“You promised to take me to Rome to die,” Lucius reminds him, his voice hoarse and weak.

“I did, didn’t I?” Pullo says lightly and looks up at the sky. The sun is still high, and there are hours yet for them to travel before they can even think about finding shelter for the night.

“Once we find a town that’s more than a few houses clumped desperately together I think we should stop there and wait for a caravan. At this rate we will be killed by starving beggars,” he says.

Lucius has closed his eyes. His eyelashes are so light in color they are almost invisible. Almost. Pullo looks away.

“We don’t have money to wait around for a caravan. What are we supposed to eat? How to pay our way into a caravan?” Lucius says finally, not opening his eyes.

“We could sell the boy,” Pullo suggests.

Lucius snorts, his mouth almost curling into a smile. Pullo makes himself look away again. It does no good.

“I can hire on as a guard, probably. The boy can run errands, if he can keep his mouth shut now. We can earn our keep,” Pullo says.

“Perhaps, if the caravan is small and poor. We can try it,” Lucius agrees, and Pullo gets his confirmation that Lucius is still very weak. He would never have agreed to this if he saw any other way. Perhaps they left the healer too soon. That’s another thing it does no good to think about now.

Caesarion comes back to him and opens his hand. There are three small coins on it. “Better and better. Look, Lucius, at this rate we’ll arrive in Rome in style and luxury.”

Lucius opens his eyes and looks at Caesarion and his loot. “Indeed.” His voice is as dry as the desert. Pullo grins widely. It’s good to see Lucius still has his sense of humour intact.

“Let’s collect the weapons too. They will weigh down the mule more but iron is always worth money in a town with a blacksmith,” Pullo instructs Caesarion, and they do another lap around the corpses with this in mind.

Only two had had swords; both of them had come at Pullo, he notes. The others had only been armed with a dagger and a hand axe respectively, and they had most likely gone to their deaths surprised at how they had been bested by an invalid who could barely lift a spear.

But that’s Lucius Vorenus for you. You underestimate him at your own peril.

The next three days pass uneventfully before they make it to a small no-name town. Pullo leaves Vorenus and Caesarion in the small room he has rented for them and goes in search of the hag this type of town inevitably has as a healer.

It’s good fortune that Lucius has been too tired and feverish to even notice him leaving, for Pullo was sure he’d have insisted they couldn’t afford to spend any money on a healer. But Pullo has promised to take Lucius to Rome to die and he’s determined to do that. Not only that, he’s going to do everything in his power to ensure Lucius lives through this. It’s a stupid promise he made himself, as no man can cheat death, but to give up now? It was unthinkable.

So he brings the hag to look at Lucius. She sniffs the worst wound, grimaces, says there isn’t much hope, but gives him herbs and instructions before she leaves, leaving Pullo with a coinpurse much lighter than it had been just moments earlier and the purse had already been dangerously light.

“We’d be better off without him. Why don’t you just kill him?” Caesarion asks, sitting on his sleeping pallet in the corner.

Pullo grunts as he sits next to Lucius’ pallet and pours some water from the pitcher onto the wound. It looks bad, the stitches tight around inflamed skin. It hasn’t healed properly, and there’s still pus running out when he pokes the wound gently with his finger. Lucius doesn’t wake but he does shift where he lies.

Pullo wets a cloth and cleans up Lucius’ wounds the best he can and it makes him feel better to see the skin clean of dust and grime from the road. The water is cool, so once he’s finished he presses a wet cloth on the wound and keeps it there until it is as warm as his hand. Then he wets it again and repeats the gesture. Afterwards the skin around the wound feels cooler, not as fever-hot.

“You’re his bitch then, a slave? I never would have believed that of you. I thought you were a warrior,” Caesarion says, his voice accusatory and sullen. A boy’s voice.

“And you are a very stupid boy, who will get killed with a tongue like that if he doesn’t learn to hold it and fast.” Pullo says. 

The water in the pitcher is running out. He’ll need to go out and get more. Straight from the well, that way the water will be coldest. Already Lucius looks better, his skin less flushed with fever. Pullo puts another strip of wet cloth on Lucius’ brow and watches as a droplet slides along his temple and into his bronze hair. Nobody Pullo knows has hair like Lucius. He must have been touched by some god as a baby.

“I hate you,” Caesarion says, but he says that often enough that it’s meaningless.

“Stay here, I’ll get more water and something to eat for us all. We’ll start looking for a caravan tomorrow.”

As he walks outside Pullo tries not to think of the endless travel still ahead of them. Even if they can make it to a port and find a ship willing to take them across the sea it will be weeks if not months until they are back in Rome. A lot of things can go wrong in such a span of time.

That night, when Caesarion is asleep, Pullo turns on his pallet and reaches over to touch Lucius’ brow. It feels barely warmer than his own hand and Pullo lets out a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been keeping.

“I’ll live to see the morning,” Lucius whispers and turns his head towards Pullo. This makes Pullo’s hand slide from his brow to his temple and then cheek. Ever the Roman, Lucius can barely grow a beard and the hairs are soft under his fingers.

Because it’s pitch black in their room and Pullo has always felt more bold in the dark, he scoots closer to Lucius and uses his hand to map Lucius’ face, his thumb feeling over to Lucius’ mouth, parting his lips, momentarily feeling the wet heat inside against the pad of his finger before he brings their mouths together.

It is brash and stupid, but Pullo has wanted this for a long time. He has wanted Lucius as long as he’s hated the man, before he ever could have imagined them becoming comrades, brothers in arms, friends. All those things used to push his want further back, make it less important as there had always been something more pressing. And there were others to consider. 

But what was there to lose now? Lucius might still die before they even reached Rome and even if he survived, when was Pullo going to have this chance again? ‘Never’ might be the answer with the best odds, and Pullo isn’t fond of bad odds when he knows there’s a way to cheat his way into winning.

Lucius’ lips taste of the medicine Pullo made the man drink before bed, bitter and harsh. Pullo smiles into the kiss. Those are words that well describe the man as a whole.

Yet, Lucius isn’t pulling away or pushing Pullo from him. On the contrary, Lucius puts a hand on Pullo’s neck, his long fingers tangling in the hair behind Pullo’s ear. Lucius is holding on to him.

It’s a hesitant kiss as they test each other, careful and tentative. Very out of character for them both, yet perhaps this time it’s warranted. Pullo lets Lucius set the pace after those first few moments, marvelling how he’s being kissed by Lucius. It feels right, fated almost, and Pullo groans deep in his chest as Lucius nips at his lower lip sending heat traveling to his cock.

Pullo wants to push Lucius down on his back and climb on top of him and grind their cocks together until they’re both spent, but it’s not going to happen. Even this way, both of them on their sides, he can feel how Lucius’ breath hitches out of pain when he makes even the smallest movement carelessly.

“Damn it all to ruin,” Lucius gasps as he pulls away. Pullo swallows and licks his lips. They feel swollen and he can still feel the ghost touch of Lucius’ mouth upon them and wishes there was light to see how Lucius looks.

Lucius maneuvers himself on his back and his breathing is labored, stuttering and not for the reasons Pullo would wish for.

“Why?” Lucius asks.

“You know why,” Pullo says, his voice a rasping whisper before he clears his throat.

“You pity a dying man?” Lucius’ voice is flat.

“Lucius Vorenus, you are a damned fool if you believe that,” Pullo says and rolls his eyes in the dark.

The quiet drags on and Pullo spends it lazily rubbing his hand against his erection. He doesn’t think he’ll get off tonight, but it feels good. He brushes the pointer finger of his free hand against his lips again and smiles.

“I do not know what to say,” Lucius says, surprising Pullo, who’d thought Lucius had fallen asleep.

“No need to come up with words. Just live, Lucius. That will be plenty,” Pullo answers.


End file.
